It has been four years since the UN Secretary-General convened in September 2021 the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) that put food at the heart of efforts to end poverty, eliminate hunger, reduce inequalities, combat climate change, and protect biodiversity. Prior to that milestone event, in May 2021, Japan had formulated the Strategy for Sustainable Food Systems, “MIDORI,” that aimed to enhance agricultural productivity potential and sustainability through innovation.

Since then, the world has witnessed remarkable changes and uncertainties in the global food system landscape. As it struggled to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of geo-political events had raised questions over food security with the prices of fuel, fertilizer, and food reaching record highs in 2022, particularly in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the average global temperature has continued to rise adversely impacting food production. In January 2025, it was confirmed that 2024 was the hottest calendar year on record, with the average temperature exceeding for the first time by 1.5°C that of the pre-industrial level – the threshold of the Paris Agreement.

Despite the situation, momentum is building up behind the transformation of food systems at the global, regional, and country levels. For example, in COP28, the “Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action” was adopted in December 2023, calling for the sustainable development of the agri-food sector and for strengthening collaborative measures to tackle climate change. Likewise, in the Asia-Monsoon region, particularly in Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Regional Guidelines for Sustainable Agriculture in ASEAN was adopted in October 2022 and so was the Japan-ASEAN MIDORI Cooperation Plan in October 2023. And ahead of COP30, in June 2025, Japanese Government unveiled a renewed initiative ‘MIDORI Infinity’ (Initiative for Net-zero compatible with Food security through INternational expansion of Japan’s Innovative TechnologY) which aims to encourage the scaling of Japan's GHG emission reduction technologies and to attract decarbonization investment in the agriculture and food sectors in Global South.

In all these times, the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) has been actively conducting the Green Asia Project, which ends in March 2026, in cooperation with many other research institutes in Japan and in the Asia-Monsoon region. Against this backdrop, the symposium will take stock of various activities in the transformation of food systems from a global perspective, with the focus on Green Asia project, in view of demonstrating their achievements and of identifying the lessons applicable to the other contexts.